OneYearBibleOnline Discussion

“1 Now the Lord appeared to him by the oaks of Mamre while he was sitting at the tent door in the heat of the day. 2 And when he lifted up his eyes and looked, behold, three men were standing opposite him; and when he saw them, he ran from the tent door to meet them, and bowed himself to the earth,”

Am I correct in imagining that the three "men" were angels [who looked like humans ~ reason for three?]? Something about them allowed Abraham to instantly know that they were or were of/representing, the Lord?

Is there a standard angel identification or mode of operation format? Are we probably talking intuition here? Do we even know for [kinda] sure?

I don't have an answer to the "three men" reference, but I do have additional questions. Is this a reference to the Trinity? Was Abraham going beyond the usual cordiality of his culture in bowing before these three? These men ate, that is, they apparently had human bodies. Does that rule out their divine nature?

I also noticed something interesting in this Genesis reading. Sarah laughed "silently" to herself, yet the men (or one of them at least) heard her "laugh" silently. That implies he read her mind, and further that she did not technically lie when she said she did not laugh (for she did not laugh aloud). Only God could read her mind it seems to me, and this could have been an "Old Testament" appearance of Jesus.

Any thoughts?

Genesis 18:1-33 (New International Version)
The Three Visitors
1 The LORD appeared to Abraham near the great trees of Mamre while he was sitting at the entrance to his tent in the heat of the day. 2 Abraham looked up and saw three men standing nearby. When he saw them, he hurried from the entrance of his tent to meet them and bowed low to the ground.

SHORT ANSWER
Let’s focus on the first verse that indicates that the Lord appeared to Abraham and when he looked at, he saw three men (by appearance). This seems to indicate that the Lord was one of the three men, but is that possible? Yes it is once you understand Theophany and Christophany.

A theophany is a manifestation of God in the Bible that is tangible to the human senses. For the majority of references in the Old Testament, it is a visible appearance of God, many times in a human form. As in Genesis 18:1-33, Genesis 32:22-30, Exodus 3:2 - 4:17 and Job 38–42.

A Christophany is an appearance of the incarnate Christ in the Old Testament, or after his ascension. In this way, Christophany is a special case of a theophany. As in Gen. 14:18-20, Psalm 110:4, Genesis 18:1-33 and Genesis 32:22-30.

In this instance, we can readily see that Abraham had a face to face conversation with the Lord and even walked toward him physically. There is no doubt that this was a physical manifestation of God. Whether it was also pre-incarnate Christ, there are differing opinions.

His two companions are universally understood to be angels. Besides being messengers to Abraham and a rescue party for Lot and his family Genesis 19, they also carry out the task of destruction on Sodom and Gomorrah similar to how God metes out judgments repeatedly in the book of Revelation.


LONG ANSWER
Theophany
Theophany, from the Greek, theophaneia (meaning "appearance/showing of God") refers to the appearance of a deity to a human, or to a divine disclosure.

Frequently, the term “glory of the Lord” reflects a theophany, as in Exodus 24:16-18; the “pillar of cloud” has a similar function in Exodus 33:9. Another frequent introduction for theophanies may be seen in the words “the Lord came down,” as in Genesis 11:5; Exodus 34:5; Numbers 11:5; and 12:5.

Christophany
A Christophany (another type of theophany) is an appearance of the incarnate Christ in the Old Testament, or after his ascension. Christophanies may include such titles as, "the Angel of the LORD”; which appears in several places throughout the Old Testament. Other scholars believe these were in fact angelophanies, or appearances of angels. While there are no indisputable Christophanies in the Old Testament, every theophany wherein God takes on human form foreshadows the incarnation, where God took the form of a man to live among us as Emmanuel, “God with us” (Matthew 1:23). Discerning any given incident as a Christophany versus a vision of an angel is open to scholarly debate.

Examples of Theophany/ Christophany
Here is a short list of many of the Theophany moments of God with some possibly being Christophany.

Genesis 3
Another possible Christophany is in the Garden of Eden, where God walks with Adam and Eve. He also sacrifices animals and covers their nakedness with the skins in Genesis 3:21, indicating a physical presence. Some scholars believe that Adam and Eve were shown the plan of salvation by being instructed in blood sacrifice as an anticipation of the work Christ will fulfill.

Genesis 12:7-9
The Lord appeared to Abraham on his arrival in the land God had promised to him and his descendants.

Gen. 14:18-20, Psalm 110:4
Some Christians believe Jesus came to Earth at various times before the New Testament, including once as Melchizedek.

Genesis 16:7
The angel of the LORD found Hagar near a spring in the desert. The term "Angel of the LORD" is first mentioned here.

Genesis 18:1-33
One day, Abraham had some visitors: two angels and God Himself. He invited them to come to his home, and he and Sarah entertained them. Many commentators believe this could also be a Christophany, a pre-incarnate appearance of Christ.

Genesis 32:22-30
Jacob wrestled with what appeared to be a man, but was actually God (vv. 28-30). This may also have been a Christophany.

Exodus 3:2 - 4:17
God appeared to Moses in the form of a burning bush, telling him exactly what He wanted him to do.

Exodus 24:9-11
God appeared to Moses with Aaron and his sons and the seventy elders.

Deuteronomy 31:14-15
God appeared to Moses and Joshuah in the transfer of leadership to Joshua.

Joshua 5:13-15
One example is the "Man" who appears to Joshua, and identifies Himself as "the commander of the army of the LORD." (). The standard argument that this was in fact Christ is that He accepted Joshua's prostrate worship, whereas angels refuse such worship; see Revelation 19:9-10. Additionally, He declared the ground to be holy; elsewhere in the Bible, only things or places set aside for God or claimed by Him are called holy; see Exodus 3:5.

Judges 13:17
When Manoah inquired of the angel of the LORD, "What is your name, so that we may honor you when your word comes true?" He replied, "Why do you ask my name? It is beyond understanding" (Judges 13:17).

Job 38–42
God answered Job out of the tempest and spoke at great length in answer to Job’s questions.

Daniel 3:25
Another example of a Christophany is in Daniel 3:25, when the fourth man in the furnace is described as "The Son of God" (KJV translation).

Isaiah 6
A certain "Suffering servant", from the Book of Isaiah, is believed by many Christians to be Jesus. The vision of Isaiah may be regarded as a Christophany. It appears to have been seen as such by John the evangelist, who, following a quote from this chapter, adds 'Isaiah said this because he saw His glory and spoke of Him' (John 12:41).

Acts 9
In Paul's vision of Christ on the road to Damascus we have a sudden light from heaven and a voice.

Rev 1:12-18
To close we have the vision of St John the Divine, recounted in Rev 1:12-18.

The OT Jews were never told that God was triune.

Scriptures is clear that no man “has seen, nor can see” God, therefore, it is clear that neither Abraham nor Moses could see God.

It became critically important to know that Jesus neither was nor is God that he himself makes the eternal life subject to knowledge that the Father is the only true God (Joh 17:3) while almost every epistle opens with thanksgiving to God our / the Father with Paul stressing that “…to us there is but one God, the Father…”.

Those who “stretch” the NT in support of triune God forget many of such verses like:

Jdg 2:1 The angel of the LORD came up from Gilgal to Bokhim. He said, I made you to go up out of Egypt, and have brought you to the land which I swore to your fathers; and I said, I will never break my covenant with you:

They also forget that Ishmael “God hears” (among many such names) was not God as Emanuel “God with us” was not God himself but He manifested Himself by / through Jesus (Mt 11:27, John 14:10, Ac2:22) as He did by / through some people of the OT.

Jesus clearly states that “I have manifested thy name unto the men..”. What was the name that Jesus “manifested”? "Onoma" means authority, character, power and so on. This is what Jesus has manifested.

They forget that a name was not a label as it is today. They forget that God has changed names of few people for a reason.

Verses like Ge 32:22-30, Ex 3:2-4-17, 24:9-11, De 31:14-15, Jos 5:13-15 [the multiple meaning word shâchâh has to be translated based on the scriptural context not by assumption: a primitive root; to depress, that is, prostrate (especially reflexively in homage to royalty or God): - bow (self) down, crouch, fall down (flat), humbly beseech, do (make) obeisance, do reverence, make to stoop, worship], Da 3:25 and many more can be properly understood in the biblical context not by inference.

Dear Readers,

The doctrine of the Trinity is consistently among the first of those teachings to be banefully attacked by the opponents of the historic, Christian faith. Cultists and religious devotees of many different persuasions come against Trinitarianism with a venom uncommon in most other arenas of doctrinal controversy. Missionaries for the Mormon church and the Jehovah's Witnesses, for example, often receive training in specific methods targeted at "refuting" the Trinity.

Why is this? Why all the hubbub? What is so threatening about a doctrine which some would care to deem merely "academic," "heady," "too speculative," "contradictory" or "confusing"? The answer is really quite simple: If the Christian doctrine of the Trinity is not true, then Jesus Christ is not Who He said He was, namely, God the Savior. But if it is true, resistless logic points to the inescapable conclusion that Jesus Christ is indeed, the logos sarx, the Word in human flesh Who "made His dwelling among us" (John 1:14).

John 1:1-14 (New International Version)

The Word Became Flesh

1 In the beginning was the Word, and the Word was with God, and the Word was God. 2 He was with God in the beginning.
3 Through him all things were made; without him nothing was made that has been made. 4 In him was life, and that life was the light of men. 5 The light shines in the darkness, but the darkness has not understood it.

6 There came a man who was sent from God; his name was John. 7 He came as a witness to testify concerning that light, so that through him all men might believe. 8 He himself was not the light; he came only as a witness to the light. 9 The true light that gives light to every man was coming into the world.

10 He was in the world, and though the world was made through him, the world did not recognize him. 11 He came to that which was his own, but his own did not receive him. 12 Yet to all who received him, to those who believed in his name, he gave the right to become children of God— 13 children born not of natural descent, nor of human decision or a husband's will, but born of God.

14 The Word became flesh and made his dwelling among us. We have seen his glory, the glory of the One and Only, who came from the Father, full of grace and truth.

Enemies of the Holy Trinity know that if the fabric of Trinitarianism can be torn down, then Jesus was but a mere man, perhaps a prophet at best, but certainly not the Theanthropos, the Godman--100 percent man, 100 percent Deity (Philippians 2:5-7) as the Bible and the historic creeds of Christendom affirm.

Philippians 2:5-7 (New International Version)

5 Your attitude should be the same as that of Christ Jesus:
6 Who, being in very nature God,
did not consider equality with God something to be grasped,
7 but made himself nothing,
taking the very nature of a servant,
being made in human likeness.

And if Christ was not these things, then He did not render sufficient satisfaction for our sins by virtue of His death and on the cross and victorious resurrection three days later. Indeed, as Paul affirms, "if Christ has not been raised, your faith is futile; you are still in your sins" (1 Corinthians 15:17). If the Trinity is not true, then Christ is not God the Son resurrected and, plain and simple, Christians worldwide are worshipping a dead man. So how important is the Trinity and its defense? I'd say it doesn't get more important than this!

The Bible, of course, never actually uses the word "Trinity." Rather, the term--since coined by Tertullian in the second century--"has simply been found a convenient designation for the one God self-revealed in Scripture as Father, Son, and Holy Spirit."Biblical passages affirming both the "Oneness" and the Triunity of this Oneness are in ample supply. Deuteronomy 6:4 affirms that "The Lord our God is one Lord" while passages such as Matthew 28:19 and 2Corinthians 13:14 both make explicit use of the "Trinitarian formula."

Matthew 28:19 (New International Version)

19 Therefore go and make disciples of all nations, baptizing them in the name of the Father and of the Son and of the Holy Spirit,

2 Corinthians 13:14 (New International Version)

14 May the grace of the Lord Jesus Christ, and the love of God, and the fellowship of the Holy Spirit be with you all.

The divinity of Christ is also affirmed in various places like Colossians 2:9 where Paul calls Jesus "the one in whom the fullness of deity dwells bodily" (see also Philippians 2:5-7; John 8:58, 17:5; Revelation 2:8).


Contrary to the claims of skeptics and antitrinitarians, the doctrine of the Trinity does not go against reason, but rather beyond it. There is an unbridgeable difference between these two assertions. The Trinity is a mystery, not a contradiction. Properly formulated, the doctrine declares that "God is one in nature (or essence) and three in person" thus doing no violence to reason. If, on the other hand, the doctrine were to declare that God is "one in nature and three in nature," then, indeed, we would have an irreconcilable contradiction. For, in this case God is said to be both one and three at the same time and in the same sense which is a patent violation of the law of noncontradiction which governs all rational thought and without which all intelligible discourse would be impossible. That the Trinity is logically tenable does not, however, alter its status as an intractable theological mystery. How the three Persons of the Trinity co-inhere one another in the Divine perichoresis, though noncontradictory, is beyond the human capacity to understand. Finitum non capax infinitum, the finite cannot contain the infinite.

The doctrine of the Trinity cuts right to the core of the very constituent nature of God. For this reason, the doctrine is an essential teaching of the Christian faith with salvific import. For, as we have seen, it is inextricably interwoven with Who Christ is--the Author and Perfecter of our faith (Hebrews 12:2). To reject the Trinity is to reject the God Who Is.

We should not agonize over the mysteriousness or complexity of this doctrine. Rather, we should take great comfort in it. For, a most glorious aspect of the Trinity is the manner in which it represents the eternal relationality of God, in perfect love. St. Augustine spoke at length of this Tri-unity of love. Love, he said, involves a lover. Thus, the Father might be likened to the Lover; the Son to the One loved, and the Holy Spirit to the bond of love.

C. S. Lewis once put it this way, "The union between the Father and the Son is such a live concrete thing that this union itself is also a Person."The Trinity, then, makes the very fact of love possible--an important and comforting fact indeed. When a person becomes a Christian, that person enters in to the Triune love. Some theologians, including a professor I once had in seminary, sometimes even refer to God's saving work (as well as the entire panoply of redemptive history) as "the Trinification of the world."

The prodigious energies that the great apologists of Christian orthodoxy throughout the centuries have poured into defending the historic doctrine of the Trinity should humble the pervasive laxity and docility of the church today with regard to this cardinal tenet of the faith. It is not simply a "heady speculation" or "abstract doctrine" without real, live import for our lives. The Trinity grounds our salvation in the immutable reality of the Godhead. It is not on optional or marginal teaching.

The Christian faith is not such that we can pick and choose our doctrines and affirm one central tenet while we drop another. Where the essentials of the faith are concerned, you cannot say, "Hey, at least I've got 9 out 10!" Its an all or nothing deal. St. Augustine says, "In essentials unity, in non-essentials liberty, in all things charity." The doctrine of the Trinity falls into the first category.

This is not a debate over end-times scenarios, modes of baptismal administration, old earth vs. young earth, or similar in-house issues which we should debate with vigor but not divide over. Rather, the Trinity is a doctrinal hill that all Bible-believing Christians must be willing to die on and to defend with the utmost of fortitude. Paul says, "Watch your life and doctrine closely…" Why? Paul says, "…because if you do, you will save both yourself and your hearers." This is a matter of eternal salvation and is precisely why we must not be lax toward it but must be ready to offer a defense--in an age where it is unpopular to do so--of the paramount importance and centrality of the Trinity.

John 1:5 (New International Version)

5 The light shines in the darkness, but the darkness has not understood it.


In Christ,

Cartoonbug

cartoonbug says:
The doctrine of the Trinity is consistently among the first of those teachings to be banefully attacked by the opponents of the historic, Christian faith. Cultists and religious devotees of many different persuasions come against Trinitarianism with a venom uncommon in most other arenas of doctrinal controversy. Missionaries for the Mormon church and the Jehovah's Witnesses, for example, often receive training in specific methods targeted at "refuting" the Trinity.

I am none of them and have not received any theological training so far.I would like you to produce proof of my venom you allude to.

cartoonbug says:
Why is this? Why all the hubbub? What is so threatening about a doctrine which some would care to deem merely "academic," "heady," "too speculative," "contradictory" or "confusing"? The answer is really quite simple: If the Christian doctrine of the Trinity is not true, then Jesus Christ is not Who He said He was, namely, God the Savior. But if it is true, resistless logic points to the inescapable conclusion that Jesus Christ is indeed, the logos sarx, the Word in human flesh Who "made His dwelling among us" (John 1:14).

Jesus has never said that he was the logos but that he spoke the logos which the Father has said before through the prophets.

For instance: through His Hebrew “dabar” or Greek “rhema” the Father has created the worlds (Ps 33:6+9, Heb 11:3).

cartoonbug says:
John 1:1-14 (New International Version)

The Word Became Flesh

While “dabar” never denoted Jesus ”logos” began denoting Jesus when the traditionalists declared war against the Father and His true worshippers.

cartoonbug says:
Enemies of the Holy Trinity know that if the fabric of Trinitarianism can be torn down, then Jesus was but a mere man, perhaps a prophet at best, but certainly not the Theanthropos, the Godman--100 percent man, 100 percent Deity (Philippians 2:5-7) as the Bible and the historic creeds of Christendom affirm.

Philippians 2:5-7 (New International Version)

5 Your attitude should be the same as that of Christ Jesus:
6 Who, being in very nature God,
did not consider equality with God something to be grasped,
7 but made himself nothing,
taking the very nature of a servant,
being made in human likeness.

All above is a clear distortion / fabrication of man. Nowhere we find written “the Holy Trinity” or that Jesus was 100% Deity and 100% man. Philippians 2:5-7 certainly doesn’t prove that neither the Christendom creeds are of any authority against the cardinal teaching by the Father delivered through His servant Jesus and the apostles that the Father is the only true God.

Morphē in V6, for instance, [Perhaps from the base of G3313 (through the idea of adjustment of parts); shape; figuratively nature: - form] pertains to Jesus becoming an obedient channel of the Father’s operation as was foretold in Isa 11:1-3, 42:1+6 to mention but two and fulfilled as recorded in Joh 3:34, 14:10, Ac 2:22 and so on.

cartoonbug says:
And if Christ was not these things, then He did not render sufficient satisfaction for our sins by virtue of His death and on the cross and victorious resurrection three days later. Indeed, as Paul affirms, "if Christ has not been raised, your faith is futile; you are still in your sins" (1 Corinthians 15:17). If the Trinity is not true, then Christ is not God the Son resurrected and, plain and simple, Christians worldwide are worshipping a dead man. So how important is the Trinity and its defense? I'd say it doesn't get more important than this!

It was not foretold that God had to be sacrificed for our sins. How could man kill God in the first place? How could man destroy an infinite power (that is if Jesus was God)?. Jesus is not Spirit after the resurrection (Lu 24:39) neither will be his followers (1Jo 3:2).

cartoonbug says:
The Bible, of course, never actually uses the word "Trinity." Rather, the term--since coined by Tertullian in the second century--"has simply been found a convenient designation for the one God self-revealed in Scripture as Father, Son, and Holy Spirit."Biblical passages affirming both the "Oneness" and the Triunity of this Oneness are in ample supply. Deuteronomy 6:4 affirms that "The Lord our God is one Lord" while passages such as Matthew 28:19 and 2Corinthians 13:14 both make explicit use of the "Trinitarian formula."

Matthew 28:19 (New International Version)

19 Therefore go and make disciples of all nations, baptizing them in the name of the Father and of the Son and of the Holy Spirit,

2 Corinthians 13:14 (New International Version)

14 May the grace of the Lord Jesus Christ, and the love of God, and the fellowship of the Holy Spirit be with you all.

The divinity of Christ is also affirmed in various places like Colossians 2:9 where Paul calls Jesus "the one in whom the fullness of deity dwells bodily" (see also Philippians 2:5-7; John 8:58, 17:5; Revelation 2:8).

Deuteronomy 6:4 is a clear message passed by God through the prophet which clearly prevails throughout the entire scriptures if the alterations of the ancient texts were to be removed and translation of multiple meaning words like logos and theos were done according to the scriptural context instead of fabrication of support to the doctrine of triune god, introducing sharp contradiction to hundreds of clear and not disputed verses that the Father is the only true God, making such cardinal emphasis on this truth that the eternal life is made subject to this knowledge.
There is no record of anyone being baptized according to the formula “baptizing them in the name of the Father, and of the Son, and of the Holy Ghost” of Matthew 28:19. All recorded were baptized in the name of Jesus. Neither the “Old Church Fathers” use this part in support of the doctrine of triune god.

In 2Corinthians 1:2-3 Paul makes it explicitly clear that the Father is our God. Could he make an explicit use of “Trinitarian formula” in 13:14? Was he hallucinating at the opening of or at the finishing of the epistle? Or, perhaps, 13:14 doesn’t mean what one would wish for?

cartoonbug says:
Contrary to the claims of skeptics and antitrinitarians, the doctrine of the Trinity does not go against reason, but rather beyond it. There is an unbridgeable difference between these two assertions. The Trinity is a mystery, not a contradiction. Properly formulated, the doctrine declares that "God is one in nature (or essence) and three in person" thus doing no violence to reason. If, on the other hand, the doctrine were to declare that God is "one in nature and three in nature," then, indeed, we would have an irreconcilable contradiction. For, in this case God is said to be both one and three at the same time and in the same sense which is a patent violation of the law of noncontradiction which governs all rational thought and without which all intelligible discourse would be impossible. That the Trinity is logically tenable does not, however, alter its status as an intractable theological mystery. How the three Persons of the Trinity co-inhere one another in the Divine perichoresis, though noncontradictory, is beyond the human capacity to understand. Finitum non capax infinitum, the finite cannot contain the infinite.

The Father made it known beyond any doubt once for all that He is the only true God. There is no mystery about this at all. Trinitarians, on the other hand, have to make the pagan styled god a mystery to “explain” why there is no such mention in the entire scriptures.

They disregard the clear warning that if one doesn’t speak according to what is written is because there is no “light” in him.

“Trinity” is not written. Therefore, those who teach it do graven injustice, to say the least, to the word of God.

cartoonbug says:
The doctrine of the Trinity cuts right to the core of the very constituent nature of God. For this reason, the doctrine is an essential teaching of the Christian faith with salvific import. For, as we have seen, it is inextricably interwoven with Who Christ is--the Author and Perfecter of our faith (Hebrews 12:2). To reject the Trinity is to reject the God Who Is.

The “salvific import” has it that the Father is the only true God. You need to quote from the word of God to prove your point. Until then you are not credible, I am afraid to say it.

“…and is set down at the right hand of the throne of God” in Heb 12:2 has to be considered as a great privilege granted to man for his obedience who was given all power in heaven and in earth Mt 28:18 (which he didn’t have before Mt 11:27).

cartoonbug says:
We should not agonize over the mysteriousness or complexity of this doctrine. Rather, we should take great comfort in it. For, a most glorious aspect of the Trinity is the manner in which it represents the eternal relationality of God, in perfect love. St. Augustine spoke at length of this Tri-unity of love. Love, he said, involves a lover. Thus, the Father might be likened to the Lover; the Son to the One loved, and the Holy Spirit to the bond of love.

Alas, God has “forgotten” about “God the Holy Spirit” in the entire scriptures. Neither Jesus knew it or the apostles. Therefore, Jesus must be a heretic and the apostles a sect.

cartoonbug says:
C. S. Lewis once put it this way, "The union between the Father and the Son is such a live concrete thing that this union itself is also a Person."The Trinity, then, makes the very fact of love possible--an important and comforting fact indeed. When a person becomes a Christian, that person enters in to the Triune love. Some theologians, including a professor I once had in seminary, sometimes even refer to God's saving work (as well as the entire panoply of redemptive history) as "the Trinification of the world."

Let’s hear God on this aspect:

Mat 11:25 At that time Jesus answered and said, I thank thee, O Father, Lord of heaven and earth, because thou hast hid these things from the wise and prudent, and hast revealed them unto babes.

Are the professors more authoritative than God? What do they propose we do with hundreds of clear verses that the Father is the only true God and that the life eternal is for those who know it?

cartoonbug says:
The prodigious energies that the great apologists of Christian orthodoxy throughout the centuries have poured into defending the historic doctrine of the Trinity should humble the pervasive laxity and docility of the church today with regard to this cardinal tenet of the faith. It is not simply a "heady speculation" or "abstract doctrine" without real, live import for our lives. The Trinity grounds our salvation in the immutable reality of the Godhead. It is not on optional or marginal teaching.

One need to recall how many had to be butchered in order for the glorious doctrine of Trinity to “grow” roots.

We find no nullification or even slightest contradiction to the cardinal doctrine that the life eternal is for those who know the Father the only true God (as I have stated above).

cartoonbug says:
The Christian faith is not such that we can pick and choose our doctrines and affirm one central tenet while we drop another. Where the essentials of the faith are concerned, you cannot say, "Hey, at least I've got 9 out 10!" Its an all or nothing deal. St. Augustine says, "In essentials unity, in non-essentials liberty, in all things charity." The doctrine of the Trinity falls into the first category.

I prefer quoting prophets, Jesus and the apostles letting others quote man.

cartoonbug says:
This is not a debate over end-times scenarios, modes of baptismal administration, old earth vs. young earth, or similar in-house issues which we should debate with vigor but not divide over. Rather, the Trinity is a doctrinal hill that all Bible-believing Christians must be willing to die on and to defend with the utmost of fortitude. Paul says, "Watch your life and doctrine closely…" Why? Paul says, "…because if you do, you will save both yourself and your hearers." This is a matter of eternal salvation and is precisely why we must not be lax toward it but must be ready to offer a defense--in an age where it is unpopular to do so--of the paramount importance and centrality of the Trinity.

John 1:5 (New International Version)

5 The light shines in the darkness, but the darkness has not understood it.

Alas, Paul didn’t say a word about Trinity neither should any who quotes him.